The Church and the Analyst

I HAVE called this paper “The Church and the Analyst” but I might equally well have called it “Some Reflections on the Self”.

The problem of the self has recently come to the foreground of discussion between theologians and analytical psychologists, in a number of books written by theologians and also in several contributions to this journal. But it has become evident that much more preliminary clarification is needed before there can be a basis of mutual understanding. It has long been said that words can so easily become an obstacle to understanding rather than a help. Much as I admire Victor White's brilliant mind, at times even his wording seems to obscure rather than clarify. When he sets out to define the difference between the psychological and the theological standpoints he says that for the one the supreme value lies in the self, “which is only immanent and relative”; and for the other it lies in the trinitarian godhead, “which is both immanent and transcendent, absolute and relative” (White, 1960, p. 154). Whenever I read these sentences I feel thoroughly at a loss, for they introduce theological terms into a psychological context and thereby distort it.

It should, however, be stated at the outset that the chief, and sometimes passionate, concern of churchmen and analytical psychologists is based on an entirely different orientation. This, perhaps, has to be understood first before discussion can get under way.

The difference between them does not lie in the object of their concern but in their approaches. Theologians and analytical psychologists are dealing with the same fundamental issues, and with similar facts of human experience arising from them, but because of their different approaches they place a different emphasis on one or the other of the component factors. Theology gives prime importance to God believed to be an objective reality beyond man, psychology to God as a subjective reality of man's inner life. Neither approach, however,